Our competition is led by the Poet Laureate, Dame Carol Ann Duffy

This Laureate Education Project is a multilingual poetry competition that celebrates cultural diversity and the many languages spoken in schools in the UK.

Mother Tongue Other Tongue is a national Laureate Education Project, led by the Poet Laureate, Dame Carol Ann Duffy. Regional competitions and events take place throughout the year. The competition is co-ordinated by Routes into Languages.

About the Competition

There are two separate parts to the poetry competition. Children from Year 4 to Year 13 can enter one or both parts of the competition.

The Mother Tongue part of the competition requires children who do not have English as a first language, or who speak a different language at home, to share a lullaby, poem or song from their Mother Tongue. They then write a short piece in English to explain the poem’s significance to them.

The Other Tongue part of the competition encourages children learning another language in school to use that language creatively to write a poem.

The project was originally devised by staff in the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Manchester Metropolitan University and Routes into Languages North West. It has been running since 2012.